


Era Three Blues

by prodigalDaughter



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Era Three, F/F, white and pink are here too but only in flashback
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25061788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigalDaughter/pseuds/prodigalDaughter
Summary: As Era Three gets rolling, Yellow Diamond considers her past-- and her future-- with Blue. Written originally for the True Kinda Love zine!
Relationships: Blue Diamond/Yellow Diamond (Steven Universe)
Kudos: 42
Collections: True Kinda Love Zine





	Era Three Blues

The Agates filed out of the hall stiffly, each too proud to hang her head but too preoccupied with how the meeting had gone to really hold it high. The Quartzes they had once managed had left earlier, after several hours of tense discussion. What worked, what didn’t work. What they ‘didn’t appreciate’. The Quartzes telling the Agates what they wanted, in complete reversal of the natural order. 

It was called an ‘airing of grievances’, and it set Yellow Diamond’s teeth on edge. It had been Steven’s idea, though his Pearl had named it, after something humans did. He’d insisted on a large round table, all the Agates and Quartzes sitting at it together, not even separated by type or colour. Yellow and Blue had watched from their thrones, but he’d said— joked?— that if it wasn’t for their size, they’d be at the table too. 

It was a little like when they’d talked to White, Yellow supposed, right before everything had changed. The Agates didn’t retaliate, though, like White had done to them. The meeting rules, drawn up by Steven, forbade it. 

Yellow and Blue were left alone in the hall, staring at the empty table. Blue turned in her throne to face Yellow, her eyes haunted. 

“Will we have to do that, someday?” she asked. 

“That’s the idea,” Yellow said. “We were meant to observe to be better prepared for it.”

“I don’t want to,” Blue said, voice a little weak. 

“It does seem inefficient,” Yellow replied, mind racing. “Perhaps we could have a few of our top Aquamarines hold the meetings in our absence and report to us a summary of their findings afterwards.”

“Steven wouldn’t like it.”

“We don’t have to tell him.”

Blue got up from her throne and slid into Yellow’s, beside her, leaning her head on her shoulder. 

“What will they say to us? What will they expect of us? Topazes and Aquamarines and Emeralds, telling us what they want.”

Yellow’s arm went around Blue without her even thinking about it, fingers slowly carding through her hair.

“They will want what we want, Blue. What we’ve decided we want, which is a better world.”

“Steven’s world.”

“And ours,” Yellow said. “We don’t have to understand it yet to want it. We’ve made a decision, and it is a decision we must not regret. We can’t regret it; it was ours.” Her voice almost broke, her hand slowing in Blue’s hair. She’d spent so long trying to get Blue back on her feet that the platitudes came almost easily, but reassuring herself was harder than reassuring Blue. She’d never done well, talking about the things that threatened her calm; she’d always just put them aside. She wanted to slide back into that old habit, to swallow down her own fear, but with Blue’s arm around her waist, cool cheek against her shoulder, she was more brittle than ever.

“What if we never understand?” Blue asked. “What happens then?”

“The universe moves on,” Yellow said, eyes fixed somewhere in the distance. “Without us.”

“It moves on,” Blue said. “That is true.”

“And renders us obsolete.”

“I hope not,” Blue said, but it was indeed a hope, not an assurance; she had no further reasons, no explanations, nothing cheering to say. Blue found one of Yellow’s hands with her own, twining their fingers. Yellow stared down at it, at the sharp contrast in their hues, at Blue’s tapered fingers between her own. 

The first time they had held hands, Yellow remembered suddenly, was when they were still fairly new. White had made them centuries before, and their civilization was thriving; Yellow knew nothing but duty. Duty to White, in helping her expand the Empire she had created; duty to Gemkind, in using her superior competence to lead; and duty to Blue, in doing everything she could to see her laugh, see her smile, make her happy. 

That weakness of hers, that adoration, had always led to the loss of her dignity in ways she couldn’t have borne, if it wasn’t for Blue— cracking the worst jokes told in the history of time just to see her smile, taking on little corners of Blue’s work for her where she could, staying ever at her side. She didn’t remember the joke that had incited that first contact anymore— something about a Carnelian and a Topaz comparing facets, probably— but it had made Blue laugh so high and sweet that Yellow had just gaped at her, wide-eyed, until Blue had taken her hand as she wiped the tears from her eyes. Happy tears, so unlike those that would come later. The hand-holding had done nothing to help Yellow come out of her reverie; she just became focused on how soft her palm was rather than how joyful her laugh. 

Millennia brought so many touches of hands, so much skin against skin or against glove. Blue would lean on her side when they spoke, or put her arm around Yellow’s back as they walked. It grounded her, reminded her of the mineral she’d emerged from, as though Blue’s very touch was her home. 

They’d danced, too. Never fused, no, that was a step too far even for them. Yellow had wanted it, yes, but she’d never have admitted it, not with how White talked, her casual mentions of how messy fusion was cross-type, how lucky she was that Blue and Yellow were too smart for that. They had danced, though, at an early ball, when Pink was new. She was charming their subjects, perched at the front edge of her throne and juggling so enthusiastically some of her balls flew up almost to White’s shoulder. 

Yellow had been watching Blue watch her, her gem feeling too large for her chest at the adoration in those glistening eyes. Blue caught her eye, and giggled, and swept imperiously out of the room. Yellow had followed her, after a few minutes, and they had stood together in an anteroom and swayed to the faint sound of music from the ballroom. Blue’s cheek had rested on Yellow’s collarbone, their bodies flush, arms around each other’s waists. Yellow knew she could have let go of her body, faded out, become one with Blue, but she couldn’t bring herself to begin. Maybe if Blue had flickered, if she’d let herself glow first, Yellow would have followed suit, but there was no space for them there. The dancing was enough. 

White knew, probably. White knew everything; White was perfection. Yellow loved her too, but not the way she loved Blue. White was to be admired, to aspire to, and to serve; Blue was to hold and adore and to memorize. When they had been new, it had been a gleeful half-secret, the way their gazes met across the throne room, the little things Yellow did for no reason but Blue’s happiness. Even if White knew, which she surely did, she kept it to herself, and that discretion was her sweetest gift to them. 

Once, Yellow had reformed with a tailcoat instead of a frock coat, back in those early days when they did some of their own exploration and actually ended up in geologic accidents that dissipated their forms now and then. She’d done it on a whim, but she’d been surprised at what a success it was— when she’d reformed Blue had thrown her arms around her almost before she was solid, cooing over how badly she’d missed her, how worried she’d been, but once she’d pulled back to look her over, her gaze had lingered around her waist and her legs, the silhouette of the new coat. She’d never admitted it, quite, but the way she kissed her and the way her hands wandered had made it clear to Yellow that she liked the tails very much. White had made a cold comment about how she couldn’t possibly consider herself intimidating in that outfit, so she’d shifted back into the frock coat for the most part, but returned to the tails for private business. 

Eventually there came a long time where she wasn’t sure if Blue even noticed, and that had been the hardest to bear. She wore the tails for her, she made sure her Pearl reminded Blue’s of any point on their schedules that might overlap. She even snuck into Blue’s extraction chamber, sometimes, instead of using her own, slipped into the hot water beside her and leaned against her shoulder. Pink had always noticed the difference, even if she hadn’t known why Yellow modified her appearance for public versus private affairs, but Pink was gone, so Yellow curled up with the lover who barely looked directly at her, letting Blue’s tears course down her own cheeks in turn.

Five thousand years was nothing, really, compared to the life of a star, the life of a Diamond. Five thousand years of an insurmountable barrier between her and Blue, like a gravitational anomaly that kept her from getting too close despite all her struggle, all her power. The duty of love and the duty of rule had fought for her time and she’d chosen to follow both. Blue had been stopped up by grief; Yellow would be sped by it. She chose not to rest— it was a foolish indulgence anyway— but to charge ahead, to keep Gems in line, to do her job. Whatever else one could say about it, it had worked; the Empire carried on, her worlds kept turning. Whatever else one could say about it, she was still alive.

Blue’s hand, on Yellow’s shoulder, began to gently knead, shaking her out of her reverie. Her head was resting on her other shoulder, the one arm looped around her, the opposite hand twined with hers in her lap. Yellow couldn’t quite see if her eyes were open or closed from this angle, blocked by her long, pale lashes. She was gearing herself up to say something— Yellow could tell because she was breathing, preparing to run air across her projected vocal cords to speak, and it made her chest rise and fall gently, her perfect kite-cut glimmering in the changing light. 

“We can’t be obsolete,” she said, “not entirely. I still have a job to do, and I need you here to do it.”

This was more Yellow’s area, having a job to do, and she sat up a little straighter. “What is it?”

“I need to take care of you,” Blue said. 

Yellow tried not to laugh. “Take care of me? I don’t need taking care of. I never have.”

“That’s why I need to do it,” Blue said, sitting up, something like a pout in her voice. “You’re not listening to me.”

“I’m listening, Blue. Tell me what you mean.”

“I mean,” Blue began, taking another deep breath, her breast pressing against Yellow’s, their gems nearly flush, “that I’ve been thinking about what Steven says. About the point of Era Three. If all Gems are freed to do as they please, that has to mean us too.”

“Theoretically.”

“Then it does. What if what I please is you? What if my meaning… my new ‘job’… is to find your meaning? To learn Era Three with you?”

“How can our purpose be to find a purpose?” Yellow said. 

“I think that’s what all purpose is,” Blue said. “If it isn’t following orders, it’s finding our own.”

Yellow sighed. It all felt circular, to her, this idea of purpose being purpose, of existing for existence’s sake, but if she was going to carry on into this new era— and, honestly, there wasn’t an alternative— she would need to take it in stride. She would need to be confident in her decisions, for the sake of—

For the sake of what?

No one looked up to her anymore. No one awaited her orders anymore. The Empire’s expansion had been halted, her armies had been disbanded, even her Pearl spent her time making a free audio broadcast with Blue’s, discussing current events and new trends in appearance modification. No new Citrines to inspect, no fleets of Nephrites to corral into order. She was very alone. 

Except for Blue, who was looking up at her with concern and adoration. Her eyes always looked a little sad, these days, even when she was joyful; the toll of her grief had left lines at their corners and dark shadows beneath. 

“You took care of me for so long,” she said, softly.

“I love you,” was Yellow’s matter-of-fact reply. 

“Then let me love you,” Blue said. “Let that be our purpose.”

Yellow closed her eyes as Blue rose to kiss her, brief and sweet. The future was more uncertain than it had ever been in their many millennia, and yet Blue stayed, Blue persisted, Blue loved. The least she could do was the same. She had known how to survive piercing grief; Blue knew how to survive the void of impossible freedom. 

As she buried her face in Blue’s pale, silken hair, Yellow decided it was all right not to know what was coming, now and again.


End file.
